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Nova Minerals reflects on June quarter activity ahead of Korbel Main gold resource upgrade and scoping study

Last updated: 09:26 29 Jul 2021 BST, First published: 08:25 29 Jul 2021 BST

Nova Minerals Ltd - Nova Minerals reflects on June quarter activity ahead of Korbel Main resource upgrade and scoping study
The Estelle Gold Project in Alaska is Nova’s pioneer exploration asset.

Nova Minerals Ltd (ASX:NVA) (OTCMKTS:NVAAF) continues to advance its flagship Estelle Gold Project within Alaska’s prolific Tintina Gold Province with strong progress made over FY21’s June quarter.

The gold explorer spent the last three months of the financial year exploring its 4.7-million-ounce cornerstone asset and preparing to deliver an interim scoping study on the key Korbel Main gold deposit.

Looking ahead, Nova has a substantial work campaign planned at its cornerstone gold asset, with a fifth drill rig expected on-site to support an ongoing 50,000-metre exploration program across the Korbel Main and RPM prospects.

At the end of the June quarter, Nova had A$15.5 million in the bank to support its future operations.

Looking ahead

In the near future, Nova expects to deliver an interim scoping study, centred on the Korbel Main deposit, which will form the basis of a pre-feasibility study.

Nova CEO Christopher Gertesein said the study will provide “a snapshot in time” to demonstrate a possible pathway to production at Estelle and will serve as a stepping-stone towards a PFS.

Exploration also continues across the Korbel Main and RPM prospects, where wide zones of mineralised intrusive — containing internal higher-grade “blow out” zones — are still being intersected.

Nova hopes to delineate the resources in late 2021, leading to a further resource update at Korbel Main and a maiden resource at the RPM prospect.

Some of the latest drilling intersections will also factor into the scoping study — they’ll be used to inform future exploration at the cornerstone gold project, where assay results for more than 10,000 metres of drilling are still pending.

Last week, in an announcement on mineralisation observed at Estelle’s RPM prospect, Gertesein said there was more exploration to come at the project.

“The drill program is ongoing over the coming months, and we look forward to bringing shareholders results as they become available.

“In time, we expect to define multiple new shallow gold resources that will further support our goal of aggressively growing the resource inventory as we continue to move towards gold production at the Estelle Gold Project.

“We will keep the market updated on the results of these programs as we progress. We currently have 4.7-million-ounces at the Korbel Main deposit, which represents just the beginning of our Estelle journey.”

June quarter highlights

One of Nova’s key programs during the June quarter centred on growing the Korbel Main deposit — activity which updated Estelle’s global resource to 4.7 million gold ounces.

Gertesein said: “We have been extremely conservative in our approach with this resource in many ways as we move towards the scoping study, including continuing to classify Korbel Main as an Inferred resource.

“Estelle is a district scale project, and Nova is on a mission to unlock it, with multiple exciting targets that offer huge potential to continue growing the overall resource inventory across the project area.

“Mineralisation remains open in multiple directions and we have numerous well-established targets, some with historic drilling such as RPM, which we plan to drill and release a maiden resource on this year.

“This will add serious depth to the Estelle Gold Project pipeline with two resource deposits to continue to grow on our path to production.”

During the quarter, Nova also finalised construction on its sample crushing preparation laboratory.

With the facility completed in late July, the gold explorer can now fast-track samples as they come through the core logging facility.

Gertesein continued: “The prep-lab will provide significant savings due to an owner-operator cost structure, as well as significantly reduced freight costs, with samples being one-tenth the original weight.

“A drastic improvement in turnaround times for assay results has been a key motivator in establishing our on-site prep-lab.”

In early June, Nova also welcomed a resource update at the Thompson Brothers Lithium Project in Canada, a battery materials asset tied to the company’s majority-owned subsidiary, Snow Lake Resources Ltd.

The indicated resource estimate is 9.08 million tonnes at 1% lithium oxide using a 0.3% lithium oxide cut-off grade, while the inferred resource estimate is 1.97 million tonnes at 0.98% lithium oxide using a 0.3% lithium oxide cut-off grade.

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